To determine the level of a filling material or bulk material in a container, topology-detecting level measuring instruments may be used. These measuring instruments scan the filling material and/or bulk material surface using an electronic signal, and can further make use of the knowledge, derived from the scanning, of the three-dimensional surface topology of the filling material and/or bulk material, so as to determine the volume of the filling material, assuming a known area under the filling material, and/or the mass, in the event of a known density, or further variables derivable therefrom. For scanning, a beam of an electromagnetic wave is passed over the filling material or bulk material, and the reflection properties at different angles are considered and evaluated.
A bulk material may be a particulate or chunky mixture which is in a pourable form. The properties of bulk material can be determined using the particle size and the particle distribution as well as the bulk density, the dumping angle, the humidity and the temperature. A bulk material may be a material accumulation on an unbounded area or within a container.
A filling material may generally denote a material which is filled into a container. This may be a bulk material or else a liquid. In particular in the case of liquids, uneven surfaces can be formed owing to vibrations, which lead for example to the formation of wavy surfaces.
A three-dimensional (3D) level measurement or a topology measurement using electromagnetic waves, in particular using radar signals, may open up new application goals in the measurement of materials. In bulk material measurements, for example, often only rough measurement results for the current fill height can be determined. The imprecise specification of the measurement values may be due to the random distribution of the accumulation of a bulk material or filling material. As a result of the three-dimensional level measurement, because of the possibility of detecting the volume and/or the mass of the bulk material accumulated on an area or of the bulk material contained in a container, a high quality of measurement can be achieved. This high quality may be achieved in that the surface of the object, measurement object, bulk material and/or filling material is determined, and the volume, the material and/or the mass of the object is determined therefrom to a good approximation using known variables for the consistency of the bulk material.
DE 10 2007 039 397 B3 discloses a method for operating an antenna array comprising a plurality of transmitters and a plurality of receivers and an associated device.
WO 2015/052699 A1 relates to a method for evaluating a content of a container using a plurality of acoustic transceiver arrays.
WO 2015/120885 A1 relates to a measurement device and to a method for detecting properties of an object.